Why I make you learn the knot first
New module. This one will likely irritate some of you, because you enrolled to cast, not to sit at your kitchen table tying loops in a length of string. I understand that. I am going to require it regardless, and here is the reasoning.
A well-executed cast paired with a poor knot loses the fish. Every time. The quality of your loop in the air is irrelevant, as is the distance it lands past the riffle. If the knot slips, the fish takes your fly and departs with it, and you are left holding a slack line, uncertain what occurred. I have watched this happen to men who have cast for years. It is not a beginner's problem; it is a knot problem, and it is entirely preventable.
This module will therefore feel inverted. We are not casting yet. We are tying.
The one knot you actually need
Fly fishing involves a considerable number of knots. People will describe the surgeon's knot, the nail knot, and half a dozen others, and I will admit some of those I still cannot tie reliably (the double surgeon's defeats me every time, and I have made my peace with it). But one knot handles most of a beginner's requirements, and that is the improved clinch knot. It is the knot that secures your fly to the end of your leader.
Learn this one thoroughly. Not "I can manage it slowly with no one watching." Thoroughly. In the dark, in the cold, with your hands trembling slightly, because that genuinely approximates river conditions at times.
Here is how to practice it at home, no fly rod required:
- Take a length of leader material, or simply some fishing line, roughly two feet, and something small to tie to. A safety pin works. So does an old hook, if you have one; just mind the point.
- Thread the line through the eye, leaving yourself about six inches of tag end.
- Twist the tag end around the main line, five or six turns.
- Pass the tag end back through the small loop formed right beside the eye.
- Then pass it through the large loop just created, and cinch it down slowly, wetting it with a little saliva before you draw it tight (this matters; it prevents friction from weakening the line).
- Trim the tag.
Do that fifteen times tonight in front of the television. Then fifteen more tomorrow. The objective is to have your hands perform it without your brain fully supervising, because on the river your brain will be occupied with wind, cold fingers, and a fish rising twenty feet upstream, and you will not have the capacity to think carefully about a knot.
Why I am stubborn about this
I noted a few lessons back that reading water outperforms fancy gear. Knots are the other half of that same principle. The issue is not what you are holding; it is whether you truly understand what you are doing with it. A man with a forty dollar rod and a knot he trusts will outfish a man with a beautiful rod and a knot he doubts. I will repeat that until someone accepts it.
Jennifer and the eleven minutes
A friend from the ward, Jennifer, once asked me at a dinner what fly fishing was even for. Genuinely curious, not being pointed about it. And I did what I invariably do, which is over-explain. I spoke for eleven minutes. The rolls went cold on the table while I described drift and presentation and how a trout reads current. Tricia held a particular look on me from across the table the entire time.
Jennifer signed up for the class regardless, to her credit, and when she reached this exact lesson, the knot lesson, she told me it was the first thing that made her feel she was actually doing "real" fly fishing rather than listening to me talk about it. Something about having a task in her hands. I believe that holds for most people. You can listen to me explain the theory of a good drift for as long as you like; it will not settle the way tying the same knot thirty times will.
A brief, genuine caution
When practicing at home with an actual hook rather than a safety pin, pinch the barb down first, or better still, practice on a barbless hook or a bent paperclip. I hooked my own ear once on an unrelated occasion, barbless fortunately, and still had to account for it at church the next morning. Do not give yourself a reason to account for anything to anyone.
Before next time
Tie that clinch knot until your fingers know it with minimal help from your eyes. Bring your practice line and whatever you tied it to; we will check hands-on next time before we go anywhere near a cast.